


Friend?

by KaytheJay



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-24 16:27:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21900961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KaytheJay/pseuds/KaytheJay
Summary: Dan's first day of school doesn't go as he'd hoped.
Kudos: 4





	Friend?

It was Dan's first day at school. He was too busy running around trying to act like Sonic on his own to really be paying any attention to the other children. He didn’t mind. He didn’t have any friends yet anyway and he’d grown up just him and his parents, so he was quite used to playing by himself. He was perfectly content just running around the playground by himself.  
That is, until two boys who appeared to be brothers walked up to him.  
“Do you wanna play with me?” Dan asked, excited to have met his first friends. The older of the two boys laughed and shook his head. “Oh, ok,” Dan said, and tried to run off to find somewhere else to play. The younger of the two boys, however, grabbed his arm and held him back. Dan twisted to try and get away. “Let me go,” Dan cried. The two boys just laughed. “Let me GO!” Dan yelled a little bit louder. Who knew children could be so mean. He’d wanted a little brother, but now he was rethinking that idea. The younger boy looked at his brother with a wicked grin. Dan didn’t like the look of that. The boy let go. When Dan ran off, the other boy cut him off. Before Dan had space to do anything, the younger came up beside him and pushed him down.  
“Gay,” the other child said to him before running off laughing with his brother. Dan didn’t know what this word meant, but it obviously wasn’t good. He checked himself for new cuts or bruises and found that he’d cut his knees really bad and was bleeding. His hands were also scraped up from trying to avoid the impacted. It stung, but it wasn’t the worst pain he’d been in. What was hurting him more was the fact that these other children, that he didn’t even know by the way, had decided to team up against him to push him to the ground. Why? What had he done that made him deserve this?  
Dan started to cry, which caused a few other children to stop and stare at him. No one came to help him though. Of course. It was his first day of school and he was already crying and he wasn’t going to make any friends.  
“Hey, hey, what’s wrong?” A boy that seemed to be a few years older than Dan asked. He came and sat down beside Dan and looked at the cuts. “Those look pretty bad. Do you want to go see the nurse?” Dan shook his head. “Well I’m Phil,” the boy said. “Nice to meet you.” Dan could only stare at this child. No one else was being nice to him, so why was this boy?  
“I’m Dan,” Dan decided to say. He looked at the boy for a second. “Do you know what gay means?”  
“It’s a boy who fancies other boys,” Phil said. “Like how your mummy and daddy fancy each other, some boys fancy boys and some girls fancy girls.” Dan nodded even though he really didn’t understand. He didn’t fancy boys, so why would those other boys tell him that he did? It didn’t make sense. Besides, he couldn’t understand that, even if he did fancy other boys, why it was a bad thing. There was nothing wrong with boys liking boys.  
“Why would they call me that?” Dan asked, pointing to a group of boys who were staring and laughing at the two of them. Phil shrugged.  
“I don’t know. Some people are just mean.” Phil looked at the cuts again. “Let’s get you to the nurse. She’s really nice, I promise.” Dan nodded and stood up.  
***  
Years passed and this Phil guy stayed by Dan’s side. They even stayed friends when Phil moved on to secondary school and Dan couldn’t follow. For a few of those years, Dan was bullied pretty badly by various people. Mostly for being gay. But a lot of them backed off because Phil would always stand up for him. Eventually, people backed off completely. Phil had gotten really tall and was a few years older than most of Dan’s tormentors, so it just made sense that he was slightly intimidating.  
Dan’s problem with the bullies wasn’t even the name calling itself. He knew he wasn’t gay. There was nothing to debate there. But there was also nothing wrong with being gay. It was just a different way of finding love than most people used. That was that. There wasn’t anything inherently bad or good about it, it just was.  
A few more years passed and Phil eventually came out to Dan as gay. It wasn’t a big deal to Dan, but he supported Phil fully. It wasn’t until Dan was fifteen that he realized that he was gay himself, and came out to Phil.  
He also decided to come out to his parents. He didn’t see anything wrong with it and Phil was fully supporting him. He hadn’t had any trouble with bullying recently. He thought he would be fine.  
His mum was fine with it. His dad, however, thought that Phil had somehow “made him gay” and insisted that they no longer be friends. He insisted that he didn’t raise Dan to be gay and Phil was the only reason that he thought he was gay.  
And for a short, horrifying moment, Dan thought he was right.  
Why would straight parents raise a gay child? Dan had always been taught to love in a straight way. What was different between him and his parents? Phil. Phil had made him gay. It was Phil’s fault that he was this way and Phil’s fault that his dad didn’t like him anymore.  
But if that was the case, who “turned” Phil gay? Phil also had straight parents.  
He came to the conclusion that being gay wasn’t a choice and it wasn’t something that someone could “make” him do. But that didn’t stop the poor situation with his dad.  
At eighteen, Dan moved out as soon as he could. He moved right into the apartment that Phil had for the last few years, despite his father’s protests. But that was the whole point, wasn’t it? To get away from his dad? Dan didn’t care either way. He knew he needed out of his house and didn’t have anywhere else to go.  
Dan got a job at some hardware store (which, he soon found out, was a mistake) to help Phil pay the rent and for food. The two of them struggled their way through college together, trying to get their lives on a good track. Phil didn’t have anything to prove, but Dan did. Dan needed to show his dad that being gay wasn’t as bad as he thought.  
Eventually, Dan and Phil’s lives were pulled in separate directions and they were forced to say goodbye. But Dan never forgot the boy who’d been there for him to help clean up his cuts on the first day of school.

**Author's Note:**

> Hits and kudos mean the world to me. Comments fuel me into next week.   
> Find me on Tumblr @lesbaphannie


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